Breast pumps systems for breast milk expression are well known. They use either electric or mechanical means for creating vacuum to aid in breast milk expression. Both types conventionally have funnel portions that are held against a woman's breast to both introduce the vacuum to the nipples and to catch the expressed breast milk. The vacuum draws breast milk from a nipple through the funnel portion to a breast milk container for subsequent use.
Hands-free breast pump support devices are also known. However, these devices have many different parts that make their use very complicated, difficult and time-consuming--rendering them ineffective. U.S. Pat. No. 5,575,768 (Lockridge et al.), which is a continuation-in-part of U.S. Pat. No. 5,514,166 (Silver et al.), discloses such devices.
In addition to a garment (or bra) and a breast pump's funnel portion, the described breast pump support devices of Lockridge et al. further require a plurality of additional elements in order to support a breast pump device: two or more loops or anchoring members attached to the garment; one or more rubber bands attached to the loops; and a mounting element, which may or may not be removably attached to the funnel portion, that has numerous posts to which the band(s) is/are further attached. The use of these devices is so complicated that many women refuse to use them. The problem with these devices is that the garments used cannot independently support a breast pump device by themselves. Indeed these devices must have additional bulky elements to support the weight of even one breast pump device, which make their use overly complicated, difficult and time-consuming even for the most gifted engineer. Furthermore, these additional support elements suffer from the increased cost of using them.